Frederick W. Robertson's Political Beliefs

In his political beliefs as in his religion, Robertson appears an often paradoxical amalgam of conservativism and liberalism, and, as he pointed out in a letter of March 1852, "My tastes are with the aristocrat, my principles with the mob. I know how the recoil from vulgarity and mobocracy, with thin-skinned over-fastidiousness, has stood in the way of my doing the good I might do. My own sympathies and principles in this matter are in constant antagonism, and until these can be harmonised, true Christianity is impracticable" (Letter 128, p. 255). In practice, however, he sided with the working man, even when he remained skeptical about particular approaches, such as F. D. Maurice's, which he believed ignored "an original instinct in our own nature, that of individuality and property" (195).

Robertson's views of the situation in Ireland exemplify his general approach to serious political issues. He opens a discussion of Irish Catholicism by noting that "There is a fearful debt due to
Ireland which has been accumulating for
centuries, through absenteeism and land lords whose interests have been in England, and not in Ireland. By the unalterable law of retribution it has all come on this generation; and the way to perpetuate
if with ever-accumulating interest on the
next generation is to pursue the same old
false vicious system which has made Ireland what she is" (362). He continues:

As to the Roman Catholic Emancipation
Bill, nothing has altered my opinion. The
old system was monstrous, and the Act
was only one of justice. Roman Catholics
in France are more attached to their
country than to the Papacy, and so they
are in Germany. But the mad Orange
system, which would wean the affections
of a persecuted and unprivileged Roman
Catholic from his country and fix them on
Rome — banish them from Maynooth to be
educated at St. Omer or other foreign
seminaries — forces him to be an Ultramontane. I earnestly trust England will never
pause, much less retrograde, in the path
of fairness and justice on which she has
entered. No doubt many immediate con sequences will seem bad, but trust to
principle and time. Stockport riots,
ferocious altarpieces — what do they come
from but Ecclesiastical Titles Bills and
proclamations against Roman Catholic
worship?

Robertson answers those who fear democracy by pointing out the roots of potential disaster in past injustice, and therefore he can write,

What appals me is to see the way in
which people, once liberal, are now recoiling from their own principles, terrified by the state of the Continent, and saying
we must stem the tide of democracy, and therefore support the Conservatives. Why, what has ever made democracy dangerous but Conservatism? French revolutions — socialism — why, people really seem to forget that these things came out of Toryism, which forced the people into madness. [363]